


Gouge Marks in a Cage

by peachygreen



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, Implications of torture, Original Fiction, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:55:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachygreen/pseuds/peachygreen
Summary: ...and learning it's better to stay inside."I am a heinous, wretched, unsalvageable child. I do think, logically, that I was not born such, or else the family would not have taken me in. That means that at some point, in that pristine environment ideal for growth, I began to pervert and twist into something foul without my or anyone’s noticing. I want to understand when. Obviously I know the point of no return-- it will not take a scholar to point out the sentence which sentenced me to death-- but when, when was the first sign of rot in me?"





	Gouge Marks in a Cage

**Author's Note:**

> this is an original story about my dnd character, a young wood elf cleric who wakes up and is drafted into a campaign where the player characters all died at the hands of a member of a particular cult, and then revived into a deathless existence. i wrote it to be standalone without any knowledge of our campaign or anything necessary though. its the longest completely original work i have ever written, and im proud of it. please enjoy!
> 
> (and i draw art of him, too, fyi! http://chasechka.tumblr.com/tagged/my-ocs )

My family name is Auvreana. My given name is Mara. In true Auvreana fashion, I was named “ _priest,”_ not because this path seemed the most natural for me, but because it would require the most struggle. All children divinely born into this family are bestowed a name which implores them to discover sacrifice, wisdom, and virtue. To the infant born outside our family, whom we give the generous gift of equal treatment, we dictate this: your struggle is to become one of us.

For twelve years, I was on the right path. It seemed so laudable when it was all the life that I had lived. Now, now that I am wise to the fact that it is all the life that I will ever live, it seems like nothing. An imagined noise.

I offer this, my last living testament and confession. I am sorry for writing in our family’s glyphs. I know that it is sacrilegious to expose our sacred alphabet to the outside world, no matter the situation. I was conflicted, however, between respecting the secrecy of our symbols, and respecting the secrecy of our inner life as I am about to tell it. This, and one other reason, is why I do not write this testament in common.

The other reason being, of course, that words of common tongue will fill too quickly the surface area of the bars of my cage.

This is nothing more than I deserve. That is what rings true above all else. It rings high and clear against these stone walls, pulses like blood through these organic shadows-- a pulsing inside the eye, a ringing inside the ear-- shrill, songless ringing. A perpetuous erosion on the sanity. This is all that I deserve, and not a drop in excess.

I am a heinous, wretched, unsalvageable child. I do think, logically, that I was not born such, or else the family would not have taken me in. That means that, at some point, in that pristine environment ideal for growth, I began to pervert and twist into something foul without my or anyone’s noticing. I want to understand when. Obviously I know the point of no return-- it will not take a scholar to point out the sentence which sentenced me to death-- but when, when was the first sign of rot in me?

It is not the first time I have wondered about rot and people. I have wondered about it with regards to my cousin, Von, who in truth is regarded as quite rotten, and I had previously wondered if people felt which parts of them were black and curdling, and if so, why they didn’t just snip those parts off like dead leaves. Now I know the answer. It is extremely difficult to know why you are bad. You just know that you are.

But more on Von later.

My immediate family consists of five brothers, six sisters, four mothers, and three fathers. We are the Auvreanas who live in the mountains. Our estate, like all the other family estates, is grand and opulent, but uniquely from the others, it perches proud upon an austere cliffside. The wind claws at you whether you are outdoors or indoors, and so we are distinct among our cousins for dressing warmly. My favorite cloak has a deep, rich green exterior, and an interior as soft as a proud mentor’s eyes. I am wearing it now. I regret that I took it with me when I left; my sister Estel covets it. If God smiles upon me twice-- once in letting my family discover this rusted epitaph, and again in leaving intact my cloak after everything-- let it go to her.

Though now that I look at it again, perhaps that would be ill-advised. It has accumulated very morbid stains. It smells, too.

I believe that the seeds of insolence were planted within me much earlier than the day of my evil’s crescendo. My sister Estel, my brother Andel, and I were the last bedroom on the left side of the children’s wing. All Auvreana children are blessed with luxurious quarters which we share in groups of three-- harmonious triumvirates hand-picked by the adults to encourage mentorship of two necessitous pupils by one promising parvenu. Still, our bedroom was the smallest by a little. We all knew it.

Actually, perhaps Andel did not know it. I never sensed any indication that the unspoken hierarchical competition among all of us children, and his place in it as dead last, ever reached him. His manner is floating, and his laughs are uninhibited. His hair grows extraordinarily fast, for whatever reason, and it drags on the ground behind him like a tail, its white gold paleness doing nothing to hide the grime and debris he picks up by simply running around. He is hopeless if I neglect to braid it up for him. He is tall as well, even surprisingly so for a high elf-- although even if he weren’t tall for a high elf, he is fifty-five years old, and it is, therefore, no surprise at all that he is too tall for me to easily braid his hair, and _especially_ when he _refuses_ to sit still!

Estel isn’t as bullheaded as Andel, but she is fanciful. She distracts easily from her religious studies by fantasies of all that she will do following her rite of passage into adulthood, upon turning one-hundred, when she will be released to the outside world. She is not to be called temptable, or gluttonous, or any such ignoble words, however. She is dutiful to her role as an Auvreana, she is faithful to her future as a friar, she is good, and untarnished, and she does not truly harbor any disgusting urges to betray the family trust and leave the fold prematurely-- despite the wistful jokes she sometimes made to me and Andel under the cover of night and privacy of our bedroom. I never chastised her very harshly for them. She is the second youngest at twenty-three and has plenty of time to learn discipline. Soon to be the youngest, I suppose.

Once, Estel and I stood and watched Andel run directly over a dent in the terrain, snag his foot, tumble head over heels in a blur of flaxen hair, attempt to right himself, step on his own hair this time, tumble again, and finally stumble back into a sprint as if nothing had happened at all. We were worried, of course, but this had happened so many times by now, and Andal’s oblivious gaiety was infectious. Estel turned to me with a dainty hand half-obscuring her guilty smile and quipped, “If only God had blessed me thusly.”

I laughed, but the sober weight of that sentiment was unknowable to me, then. I’m certain she herself did not understand what truth her words held. I imagine now how things might be if I had been as simple, as pure, as Andel-- if someone had beaten me into shape before it became too late, If I had been untwisted, untangled, unthorned-- if only. If only God had blessed us all thusly.

We quickly waved Andel down so we could tend to his scrapes from tripping. Well, mostly I did, because Estel is squeamish about blood. We worked together to keep Andel distracted while I disinfected his wounds. He hates the sting, and her soothing shushes didn’t entirely keep me from shivering as we listened to Andel wail.

I said, in a voice as though it had only just occurred to me, “I found a warren last night.”

With only a sniffle and flushed cheeks to show that he had been crying at all, Andel brightened instantly. “Really?”

“Really, a big one too. I was practicing evocation magic not far from here-- _That’s_ when I saw a huge hole in the crag. I nearly fainted because-- I’d thought I wandered too far and stepped in a viper den. I kept praying, praying for forgiveness, and _then_ , I take a proper look and notice a furry little grey foot. It was only a rabbit! My mind caused all the trouble for me. I think I’d never prayed so hard in my life.”

“Mara, you just never _need_ to pray for forgiveness.” Estel teased me, ignorant of the contents of my mind at that very moment, the silent pleading for penitence. For I was lying. The truth was, I had seen no such rabbit warren. It is prohibited to lie to family. And the truth was, it was not the first time I had done this-- lied for convenience or lied to spin a yarn-- for Andel’s benefit.

“How big?” Andel insisted eagerly, excitement numbing him to my final ministrations, my mumbled prayers of healing to close up the wounds. I wiped at the residual blood as gently as I could with my robes. The material is black, I reasoned, nobody will notice.

“From what I could tell, the warren might’ve been as big as our bedroom, Andel. No, maybe even an _adult’s_ bedroom. And it was filled to the brim with rabbits!”

Now that I was finished, and before Andel became too wound up about rabbits (he loved animals hugely, and they were an extremely rare sight on our bluffy cliffs), I changed course by pointing out that self-study time was coming to an end, and group study would begin soon.

The hour had drawn even closer than I’d feared, however, which was made clear only when we were walking down long marble hallways and realizing them to be empty. Knowing we must be the last of our siblings to arrive, we broke into a hurry. We halted the moment we skirted a corner and came face-to-face with one of our mothers, and immediately ducked our heads in reverence. However, impossible is the speed required to hide guilt on three children’s faces from the eyes of their mother.

“What happened?” Within moments she was guiding Andel’s arm out from the curtain of his cloak. With a sinking stomach, I realized I had neglected to mend everything in my rush. There, in full view, by the inner elbow, was the tear in the material.

Andel’s wide, honey-sweet eyes sought out mine, but mine stared like abysses at the floor. Shut out in the cold, I heard my brother’s breath hitch, and he stuttered and choked out something that was no answer at all. I confess it. I wanted badly to save him. In fact, I could have saved him. I held a hundred lies on the tip of my tongue that would protect my brother from a punishment he wasn’t capable of eluding on his own. That was what scared me. I startled at how quickly and easily I felt the lies coming to my mind. Had I grown that comfortable with it?

That thought scared me into silence, as my window to affect the situation passed, as our mother absorbed our guilt. I had lied before to Andel, maybe even on rare occasion to another one of my brothers or sisters, but never to an adult. Not directly.

Of course, if we are not to cower from the bald truth, I lied to them every time I healed Andel in secret. Every time he was not acting cautious and decorous, and it resulted in yet another scrape or tear, and he was not punished for it simply because I fixed it before anyone found out, I am lying. When essays are assigned to Estel to test her knowledge, and she is so anxious and neurotic over the state of her work that she can’t sleep, and I agree to proofread for her, I am lying. I am a poor mentor. My lies deprive them of punishment and therefore, of growth and wisdom. It is my weakness that I could hardly stand to let them receive it. I love my siblings, and it was so hard to feel them tremble helplessly on either side of me, and I hated it, and I wanted to feel it as infrequently as possible. Weakness, craven self-indulgence-- I confess to all of it. I sicken myself.

There were no more words needed. Our mother understood that Andel had, yet again, stumbled in his personal obligation to overcome his foolish nature. He was fifty-five years old, and expected to be well-grown out of this disposition by now. He is just over halfway to adulthood. How would he fulfill his purpose if he remains this way? How would he be expected to spread our gospel to the outside world when he bumbles around with bruised shins and holes in his vestments?

She lead us to the library, where the other children were already gathered. Punishments rarely, if ever, involve physical pain. At that time, in that house, I had lived twelve years without ever knowing pain. Our family does not comprise of barbarians, nor sadists, nor gluttons for punishment-- what is done is only what is necessary.

As she explained to us all Andel’s failure, she stood him beside her in the center of the room. He always hated being the center of attention. That was why she arranged it like that. She forced him to explain, in his own words, what he had done.

“I was runnin’.”

“Why were you behaving in a deliberately uncouth way, when you have been told time and again to behave differently? Why did you disobey yet again?”

“I was just-- I was just runnin’ and then, somethin’ caught on my foot and I went down so fast, I-I--.”

I could tell Andel didn’t understand. I wanted to yell at him. It would have been so easy, so much better for him, if he had obeyed in the first place. How hard is it to just be careful? This was needed, necessary for him. I shouldn’t have delayed this for all this time. Maybe he would understand now.

He didn’t. Every time I came back to our bedroom, and saw him staring blankly out the window, I could tell. He still didn’t understand. His hair was intricately braided with dozens of silver bells, a single one of which weighed enough to pin your palm to the table. It tired him terribly to walk around the house and attend all our mandatory lessons and meals; going outside was out of the realm of feasibility. He was only allowed to go without them at night, and come morning was expected to sit and have them all weaved into place again. This sorrowful duty was mine.

It took exhaustive coaxing from Estel and I every morning to make him sit still for his bells. He pleaded with us, as though he believed we were in control of this, as though he was not the one doing this to himself. I envy his simplicity in some ways, but I also pity him immeasurably.

Andel needed only to prove that he could move with unhurriedness and grace, and the bells would go away. But it kept happening: the delicate tintinnabulation, enchanted so as to be audible throughout the estate, would resound in our ears, and we all stifle a groan at the fact that Andel has again failed to keep from making some rash, sudden action. When he moves too quickly, the movement disturbs the bells, and then all the children are punished communally.

We have to stop whatever we are doing, and come inside to the ascetic room.

The ascetic room is oft-used for punishments of this type. That is to say, nonspecific punishments. It appears to you as a small square room, devoid of furnishing or windows, with nondescript light emanating from every intersection of every plane; where the four walls meet each other, and where each meet the floor and the ceiling. There are no shadows; nothing eludes the light. The result is subtly but unbearably unnerving, especially over long exposure. It is impossible to feel comfortable in the ascetic room. That is the point.

The first child enters the ascetic room, and as soon as the door is shut, the next child may go in. To him, the first child is no where to be seen, due to an enchantment. We all go into the ascetic room, and there is only one, but we are each alone in our version. The door disappears behind you, as well. You must be fetched from the outside when the punishment is over.

I had never been in the ascetic room so much and so frequently before. It was happening every day. There was one day when, with no preamble, I became suddenly, blisteringly angry. I had never, ever been punished for something I had actually done. I had only ever received communal punishments, where blame lay on the shoulders of others, others whom I could not control, others who did not heed my advice, who tripped upon the same stumbling blocks, again and again, while I tread carefully with every step. I was incensed, and, I think, a little soft in the head from the effects of the ascetic room. I began to pace, and stomp, and kick my legs and beat my fists against the wall.

My heaving breath, my boiling blood, all of it went cold when I noticed that there was a fracture in one of my gold sleeve cuffs. I must have impacted it at some point during my shameful tantrum.

At that moment I heard a creak behind me, and knew that the door had reappeared. My hand shot out to turn my sleeve, heedless of input from my mind. I turned towards the door at a relaxed speed, with my heart in my throat, and my arms held close to my sides to conceal the fracture on my inner wrist.

I stepped out of the ascetic room when one of my fathers held the door open for me. A glance around told me I was the first to be let out.

“I heard a commotion.” My father looked down at me. I stared back, cold inside, heart still pounding, eyes abysses. He asked, “Were you the one?”

I’d never lied to an adult before. “No,” I said. Easily as that.

One by one each of my siblings were let out, and last was Andel. He was heaving, cheeks glistening and ruddy. His trembling fists began to creak open, like rusted clasps, and there were several consecutive low thunks as silver bells fell to the floor. His hair was gnarled and disheveled, long loops of it pulled violently out from the tightly braided style, and behind him, long blond strands lay in loose clumps on the floor, tracing his path from the ascetic room.

He was the first to be herded back into the room, wailing and weeping, followed by all of us in the same order as before. I was to be last again.

Before he opened the door for me, my father paused. I felt, but did not see, a large hand warming my shoulder. My eyes were on the ground.

“Your staid composure has not gone unnoticed. I know it is trying,” The low, warm, fond mumble surprised me. I blinked. “But have patience with the ones who are less steeled. Bear their burdens and help them grow. You will lead all the world’s lost lambs back to God one day.”

My head shot up and I looked at him with pure, disbelieving happiness. Of all my siblings, all of us who study, who practice, who work endlessly and endure and correct ourselves to achieve exacting standards, I was singled out, I alone was praised. My father smiled gently at me, and his hand placed itself on my head. Shivers ran through me. I nearly closed my eyes at the touch. Then the hand was at my back, and I was pushed again into the ascetic room.

It was difficult to keep an even breathing, but I was anchored somewhat by my heavy thoughts. I had a lot of time to think. At this time was my first realization, I think, that something was wrong with me. Inside me. I didn’t yet think it irreparable. But I realized that when all came down to it, I had lied an adult without hesitation. Simply to elude my punishment, when I could not do the same for Andel to elude his. Andel’s excruciating expression while being forced back into the ascetic room-- and furthermore, though I could not see it, the expression he must be twisted into now-- haunted my inner eye. I was wracked with pity for him, and guilt, and anger towards myself. If I were going to lie to adults anyway, why didn’t I choose to start doing so back when it would have saved my brother from all this trouble? Saved all of my brothers and sisters?

I wanted to punch the walls again, and clasped my hands tightly under my chin to steady myself against doing so. I am sorry that my honest concern was not respect for the sobriety of the ascetic room, or respect for my own composure, or even respect for my gold cuff. I was just afraid that if I made the fracture any bigger, I would be unable to hide it.

To be clear, I knew logically, of course, that punishments will come to the deserving in equal proportion to their accumulated sins. I knew that delaying the inevitable will only allow the punishment to bide its time and grow, until, by the time it descends, it drowns all your senses and fills your brain, lungs, everything you have. I knew all that. Every child of the Auvreana family knows these basic facts from infancy. This is the reason for Andel’s bells, the reason why punishments are delivered to us children in the way that they are: to purify us while our mistakes are still small and manageable.

To cut out the rot, before its black tendrils spread to the vital organs, and it is too late.

I had never before experienced temptation like that, however: the temptation to lie and elude and manipulate things to go smoothly in the moment. Because I could. I was new to realizing this: _I could_. And if I’d thought about it I would have realized how dangerous this was, this lust for ease, but I didn’t think about it. I just didn’t want to be in the ascetic room anymore. I just wanted to hear Andel laugh again.

Over the next few days, I stuck to Andel’s side tirelessly. I kept close enough to watch him and warn him when he was in danger of disturbing his bells again, but not so close that it was obvious what I was doing. If anyone asked me to what business I was attending, I always had a convincing excuse at the ready.

When we had gone a week without a single chime, I saw the relief in the faces and bodies of my siblings. I had seen them walking around each day with mounting expressions of hope and dread, buried under cautious dispassion. No one blamed Andel for the communal punishments, as most of them had incited their fair share of communal punishments as well-- but we were all so very tired. And perhaps some of them blamed Andel, a little, for being a particularly slow learner, but wrath is a sin upon itself, and they wouldn’t dare show it.

As I had carefully coached him to, Andel subdued his emotions at the time of his long-awaited unbraiding. It was not exactly forbidden to show joy at a punishment’s end-- but I wanted to be extra careful. Some mothers and fathers varied in the details of what they enforced as desirable behavior. (In the Auvreana estate by the sea, for example, a clear voice was both decorous and necessary to be heard over the crashing waves, but in the Auvreana estate of the caves, the cavernous walls bounce around any voices speaking above a whisper, and such volume is seen as an outburst.)

It was not until Estel and I led him outside for the first time again, out to his reward, that Andel finally succumbed to his emotions and cried. I had found his reward during the week, during the rationed instances when I’d instructed Estel to watch Andel in my stead. I chose low-risk hours of the day to do so, but the fear of all my careful work being undone was nerve-wracking all the same. I thought I kept hearing distant chimes, but it was only my fear twisting my reality as I searched the crags for a rabbit warren.

Now, I felt my heart swell, feeling all my treachery and conniving was worth it for the awe and joy lighting up my brother’s face. He really was ridiculously pleased by just seeing a couple rabbits. Oh, Von, if only your soul were so easily soothed!

The warren wasn’t nearly half as big as the imaginary one I’d spun in my lie, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. I stopped him when he reached out to try and touch one, as I’d known he would. “They’ll bite,” I warned, “It’ll ruin your glove and leave a wound.”

“Can’t you fix it?” Is what Andel would have whined, with pleading childishness, just a week or two prior. Now, his eyes turned wide, and he fearfully drew his arm back. I smiled at him approvingly, and a little sadly.

“The grand dinner is in just a few days,” I consoled him. “You won’t be allowed to go if you’re being punished. Let’s be extra careful for just a little longer.”

Estel nodded in agreement. She was crouched and staring into the warren, but a warm smile played on her face. She said, “I’ve gotten quite fond of you. I would hate to go anywhere if one of you got left behind.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, touched.

She looked at me slyly. “I was talking to the rabbits.”

“Where’s that sharp wit in your essay drafts?” I countered through my laughter, with her joining in.

We were all feeling happier, lighter than we’d felt in weeks, both because of Andel’s hard-won redemption, and because the grand dinner was just on the horizon. From birth to one-hundred, we are quarantined from the influence of the outside world-- until we are grown enough to resist it, to ourselves act the influencer. For those of us who have never been outside, our world consisted only of our immediate household, the siblings and adults whom we know most intimately, and our cousins whom we saw at a much more infrequent rate. We looked forward to the few times a year the grand dinner is hosted, in a way, even more than our adulthood. It felt more tangible.

(Oh, how grateful I am for the years I got to enjoy my humble vivarium.)

During grand dinners, all branches of the family congregate in a single location: a supreme dominion, large enough to house every single living Auvreana, even afford us all private rooms, even the children, and the size so imposing it nearly renders our domicile estates as dwarfs. The manor is surrounded by extensive, beautiful gardens. The adults gather for important discussions related to matters of proselytism and geopoliticism, the contents of which children are not privy to. Even the members of the family who are preaching our wisdom to the outside world make the return trip for the grand dinner, and it is exciting to see them even if they cannot actually speak of their travels.

As for the children, very little is expected of us other than to fraternize, to expand our social intelligence-- which by the very nature of our upbringing can be admittedly underdeveloped. It was a task most of us took to with greater relish than all other duties. The usual work and readings are not assigned. The curfews are relaxed. The most austere father or mother, whom you avoid like the reaper at home, can be approached while they are chatting and drinking, and they will suppress a chuckle and tell you to run along with no force behind it at all.

Adults may travel in private coaches with windows, but we are ushered into black carriages with no viewing port to the outside. The interior was padded with lush, luxurious velvet, with plush pillows and soft cushions densely populating an enclosure that was small and round, not a firm edge anywhere to interrupt the nest-like arrangement. The rocking and rumbling of the trip never failed to soothe me, while the excited chattering of my siblings infected me enough to keep me awake, if more sedated than usual.

“I’m going to swim in the eastern garden’s pond every day,” Estel said with a dreamy sigh, head drooping a little towards one shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll join you sometime,” I hummed sleepily. “I’ve been studying the theory of water walking... for a while now... but there’s no where to actually practice it, at home...”

She giggled at me. “Mara, acting like you’re turning one-hundred this year won’t make it true.”

A particularly pronounced jostle of the carriage distracted me from answering, her side gently colliding into, and briefly fitting against, mine. We both startled, and she sobered minutely, straightening a little from her languid half-lounge against a large cushion.

“That reminds me,” She carried on. “Isn’t Von turning one-hundred next?”

I was silent awhile. “Yes,” I finally said, voice tight.

“ _God,”_ She breathed. “How exciting. I’ve never seen a rite of adulthood yet. ‘Course, neither have you. ...Aren’t you excited?”

“I don’t know that Von is entirely mature enough,” I admitted, not without a note of distaste, “to be called an adult quite yet.”

She blinked. “Well, what’re they gonna do-- keep him and call him a child until he’s old?” A pause. Nervous. “Can they do that?”

“The time to leave will come to us when we are wholly, entirely ready to receive it,” I said.

We didn’t look at each other. “You’re right, of course, brother,” Estel said meekly.

I didn’t want her to think I was chastising her, so I gentled my tone. “Don’t worry. You’ll sooner receive the rite than Von will.”

She sent me a sideways glance and a tentative smile. “I’m twenty-three. You think him seventy-six years too green?”

“Well, I think you’re at least two-hundred too green. So...”

“Mara, you bully!” Our light tone and expressions had returned, but the conversation had dispelled the air of ease for me. I’d forgotten entirely that Von was ninety-nine years old now.

For as far as I can remember, not one of my cousins ever intimidated me more than the very eldest. It was not that I was afraid he would hurt me (though I shuddered to think of what kind of father he would be to me, once his one-hundredth year gave him the authority). It was more of a deeper discomfort with his existence; I was unsettled by the way he acted. It was counter to everything we are taught. Once, he was the closest thing to evil I believed I had ever known. I fear you will wrinkle your forehead, maybe laugh, and dismiss my dread as childishly myopic and sheltered-- how quaint, Mara, that of all the world’s monsters this is your crowning citation-- I will at least say he _was_ until very recently-- but here, I will try to set up why he was so confusing and distressing to me.

Hearken; let us review what every child knows. All cruelty, castigation, horror, and heartache in this world is born of straying from the path of peace. It is our flaws that gravitate misery and chaos towards us, and by our own power we can, and must, slough them off, must mercilessly debride ourselves of them with no blemish spared, else it linger like a black hole in us, drawing in misfortune.

Therein lies a dichotomy of devastating simplicity. You will have peace, or you will have punishment. The path of least upset is naturally the most peaceful, and hence, best. Straying from the path is born of ignorance of the path: either ignorance of its objective superiority, or ignorance of how to follow it. If one is neither of these things, he cannot, should not, possibly want to choose any other path but the correct one, the pious one, the one I know to be best.

And this is why Von has scared me ever since I can remember.

“You’re all fucking hypocrites.”

All sound was smothered. No clinks, no voices. There were nearly a hundred at the table; a hundred forks and knives, a hundred drinking glasses, a hundred pairs of eyes all frozen in place.

I remember where I was sitting. Across, and farther down the table from him. Far enough that he was in profile; I remember the stony set of his jaw, the jump of muscle in his cheek from the grinding of his teeth. He did not look large in his seat, not like Andel, I remember that. He sat between two of our fathers, an adult on either side of him, making him look, comparatively, almost diminutive-- but his jaw was thrust out like he towered over us all.

One of the fathers, the one who sat beside Von from his perspective and behind him from mine, was the first to put his napkin down.

“Elaborate.” It was soft, and low, and _dangerous._ Just the sound chilled me and made me irrationally desperate to appease-- anyone, just to not hear that tone.

Von did not reply. Not immediately. A suffocating amount of time passed, what was in reality only a few seconds, but each of those seconds was witnessing a wildflower standing wildly unaffected against a hydraulic press. A rejection of the laws of reality, with an obstinance that was bordering on gloating.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you,” Is what he finally said.

“If you-”

“Of course, I’d be happy to,” Von deliberately cut him off. “Fuck you very much, father.”

He stood up, the scrape of his chair echoing monstrously in the silent dining hall.

“You abuse each other every day for no reason at all,” He drawled. “It was unacceptable of me to call you hypocrites; actually, you’re all deranged. You cite piety and mercy and then rain abuse on miserable children too stupid to blame anyone but themselves for the pain they’re in, and you do it because if you accept it’s meaningless now, you would have to accept that it was meaningless then too, back when _you_ were just a stupid miserable child in pain-”

“ _Silence.”_

Imbued with power that could shape the world, the single word bespoke from the end of the table, where sat the father rumored to be one thousand years old, venerated the very air that surrounded him and hushed all things. Von’s mouth was still moving, but suddenly I couldn’t hear any sound from his lips. I couldn’t hear anything-- dazed, I lifted a hand and snapped my fingers by my ear. Nothing.

I saw the other children’s heads swiveling, utterly confused, and knew they were experiencing the deafness as well. I saw several adults lift their hands to their ear. However, I did not see a single adult who looked surprised.

I looked back at Von. His eyes were wide, but quickly turning from shocked to indignant, icy blue filling with molten fire. His mouthing was angrier now, rapidly progressing into furious. By the time several adults had gotten up to accost him, and his arms were being pulled behind his back and he was being pulled away from the dining table, Von was screaming, screaming at us, but there was simply no way for us to understand what he was saying.

The first sound to come back was the boom of the great big mahogany doors slamming shut. Then all sound rushed back in. There was time for only a few people to manage a gasp, perhaps the first syllable of something, before our eldest father spoke again.

“Pray for him to find peace,” He intoned, and there was an understated shade of mourning and sincerity to his sober tone. “Pray for the patience to bear his burdens. Steady yourselves, my brothers and sisters; my dear, dear children.”

At his words, I felt a blanket of calm lay over my thoughts. I felt deeply assured; firm in my certainty of the unimportance of what just transpired. There was no urgency, there was no alarm. My poor cousin was to be pitied, for he lacked the faith that I had, the unshakable faith in my mothers and fathers to handle and polish my soul with erudite hands.

Except. The blanket frayed at the corners. Except, Andel’s bells.

It felt as though my entire mind seized in a single distressing twitch.

A bolt struck my core that said _I do not have total faith in my family to know what is best._

The entire blanket unraveled at the seams, the threads disintegrating. The spellmagic slipped off me like water, and I found myself standing on an island above a casting of calm emotions and suggestion in which all my kin were submerged.

I understood almost immediately what had happened, being novicely acquainted with the spells from my studying already, and worked to stitch my face into utter neutrality. I knew to keep a calm expression even before I knew the reason why. I resumed eating, going through the motions as I glanced slowly around, noticing the way the adults were inspecting the faces of the children in much the same manner as I was doing. Looking to make sure the spells worked.

I cannot begin to express how ashamed, how deeply and miserably repentant I am for the insolence I allowed my mind to entertain, the treacherous places I allowed my thoughts to wander. I cannot express the profound regret. I can only confess it all here, as I lay curled in this cage, impiously misusing the holy symbols which adorned my cloak to scratch out these glyphs with fingers that are beginning to turn black and blue.

I ate and drank, and once enough time had passed to ease suspicion, I turned to the mother on my right. “May I use the restroom?”

She nodded at me. I ducked my head in gratitude and carefully moved to stand up.

I had only taken a few steps away, when-- “Mara?”

Heart hammering, I turned. My expression was sedated, almost sleepy. “Yes, mother?”

“Are you feeling alright?” She said. I blinked with deliberate slowness.

“Yes,” I said. Then faked a shy shuffling, shoulders hunching slightly, “...I’m a little tired.” I said, soft, as though I were admitting to a mild crime.

She considered how to treat me for a moment, then finally smiled at me with rationed warmth. Not even an hour ago, an act of gentle attention like that would have sent me over the moon. She said, “It is understandable, Mara. You’re so young, after all, and the trip is long. You can retire early to your bedroom for tonight if you wish.”

I thanked her in a softly reverent voice, and took my escape as reward.

I make no attempt to excuse or reduce what I did, but it is the truth-- I swear it-- that I believe my main motivation of that night to have been pure, intense, spellbound curiosity. I was not shocked at the use of force to suppress our reaction to Von’s words-- naturally, there would’ve been an uproar, and the table of the grand dinner was no place for such a thing. But I was beside myself with disbelief over what Von had said, and hungry, starving for what else he had to say that I didn’t get to hear. I couldn’t bear to dismiss it because his words echoed the parts of myself that I so recently discovered and hated.

I knew where Von had been taken. Every Auvreana estate had one, including this manor. After all, it often used for punishments that did not warrant-- or did not have the time for-- specificity.

I crept up the banister one step at a time. I padded down the hallway, praying that I was correct in assuming no one would want to part from the food and merriment of the dinner for very long, not even adults carting a disobedient ward. I still froze wide-eyed at every creak and shadow. Wait and listen. Blind and invisible. It was all so arduous that I had time to wonder what I was doing. The hideous creaking of these old floors! Now up these steps, just as carefully. How was I even going to do this when I was completely unprepared? Almost there, just around this corner. I was just scolding myself for not yet being able to cast any silencing spells of my own, when I saw that the door to the ascetic room was already open.

I froze, stomach plunging into ice. For a terrible second I believed that my timing was so disastrous that I had arrived while the adults were still forcing Von into the ascetic room, and they were about to see me here. Then I saw Von emerge from the room. Alone, and already moving to shut the door.

I had been gathering my courage to commit a deathly grievous sin. I had been planning on directly and insolently interfere with Von’s punishment in such a blatant, indelicate way that I would have no recourse at all, if caught. I thought I had embraced insanity. Yet what I was looking at now was barely comprehensible to me.

“Did you just let _yourself_ out of the ascetic room?” Von jumped and whipped around when my whisper cut through the dark.

“ _Fuck!”_ He hissed.

His eyes narrowed to slits, and he advanced on me much faster than I anticipated. I flinched back, alarmed, but he snatched my arm in a vice grip and yanked me close. Before I knew what had happened I was being thrown, my back against the wall of the ascetic room, raising my head just in time to see the door disappear behind Von.

“What are you _d-doing,_ ” I began, high-pitched, about to demand to know why he had doomed us.

Despite what I had seen, my mind screamed that the ascetic room could not be opened from the inside, and that now we were stuck until the adults came to end his punishment, which with the severity of his outburst would likely not be until morning-- and I would be found here, I would be caught here. Von spat, “Shut up, Mara.”

He took a step closer. I pressed myself harder into the wall, too shaken to maintain composure.

Earlier I had thought him slight, but now that I was more than a passive audience, now that he was towering over me, I knew better my own size. He eyed me like a loathsome insect.

I spoke slowly, keeping eye contact I didn’t dare break. “Von, let me--”

_“Zone of truth.”_

I gasped, jolting ramrod straight. Immediately I attempted to rebel against it-- but I knew it when I had lost. I felt it like a lump in my throat. It was like a swift submersion into ice water, I felt all my composure ripped to tatters, and my guilt and nervousness that I had such talent for suppressing all rose over my head.

“There’s no need for this!” I cried.

“We’ll see,” He said. “Now. Does anyone know you’re down here?”

“No,” I said weakly.

That seemed surprising to him. He tilted his head, thoughtful. “Are you expected back at the table tonight?”

“No.”

“Hm,” His eyes narrowed. “Did you come here in _secret,_ Mara?”

My silence was just as damning.

“What,” Von started to laugh, “What in the hell is this? You left and, what, no one asked any questions?”

“Dismiss the spell. Please, this is humiliating.”

“Answer, or I’ll bind you and leave you here for them to find.” I swallowed at his threat. He didn’t seem to be bluffing.

My mind bucked like a frightened animal when I tried to lie, and so the truth fled out from my mouth. “I lied to one of our mothers. I said I was going to bed when I had no intentions of doing so.”

“You _lied? You?”_

His shock plunged me into shame, though I suppose I would feel even greater shame if he weren’t shocked, though I suppose none of it changed the gravity of my sin. With that shame came a compulsion, a wild urge to confess-- everything. The spell made my shame too heavy for me to bear, and overrode my ability to reason, making anything feel preferable to continuing to lie any longer.

That was how I came to say, “I lie all the time. I lie to my mothers and fathers to escape punishment and to help my siblings escape too. I f-feel-- the-- pun-punishments. Are. Un... fair.”

With every blasphemous word I crumpled further, until I was covering my face entirely, trying to feel hidden any way I could while I was being torn open.

I hunched with my palms over my eyes, fingers digging into my head until it hurt. I focused on trying to swallow the dry sand in my throat.

Seconds passed. There was silence, only silence, and my wretched thoughts. Then, “Mara. Look at me.”

The gentleness in it startled me. Slowly, I peeked over my hands.

I was shocked to have to correct where my sight fell; Von had kneeled down on one knee before me. An almost alien emotion showed on his face: gone was the loathing, gone was even the anger, and in its stead I was seeing an expression I’d never seen him make before, not to anyone. He looked at me as though taking me seriously for the first time.

“How much of my words did you agree with?” Von asked.

I knew what he meant, and was terrified of my answer, but it was spilling out without a chance for me to stop it. “Some awful part of me saw sense in it,” I choked out miserably. “Some horrible part of me. I came here to demand you tell me what else you were going to say because I was hoping the rest of your words would be nonsense and I could prove to myself that I was still sane. I saw sense in it. Oh, _God,_ ” I whined, covering my face again.

There was a pause, one that stretched, and stretched, and stretched.

Then I heard him under his breath, dismissing the spell. He muttered, “Get a hold of yourself.”

My mental crucible released its vice, with something almost like a sigh of pressure release that was felt rather than heard. Suddenly, I could think again. That is not to say my wounds weren’t deep, raw and throbbing. But now I repossessed the faculties to tuck my spilled organs back inside, and I took deep breaths, and did. When I opened my eyes again, they were abysses once more.

“That was depraved,” I said. “Violating your own blood like that.”

“You’re not my blood,” He said, and I flinched, because he was right, but then he continued, “Not that I care.”

We are nearing it. It is at this time that I ask you to imagine an accompaniment to this scene, something that was not really there, but a fiction that will bring you closer to the truth. Imagine a simmering orchestra. It hums a low, droning, monotonous note, like hornets trapped inside the inner ear.

I was doing my best to stitch my skin back up after he’d gone and torn himself a viewing port, but Von didn’t acknowledge the effort by looking at me with any smaller amount of wary scrutiny. He eyed me like he thought I might explode, either into tears or into chunks.

Still kneeling, he said to me, “If you tell anyone what I’m about to say, I’ll let them know about your little lying habit. I know how to answer even under zone of truth, how to say just enough to prove _your_ guilt only.”

The strings begin to fidget, with small, nervous plucks.

My brows furrowed as twinges of fearful anger sparked through me. I was shocked at how casually he would use against me the secrets he ransacked from me. My mouth opened, but my enfeebled voice couldn’t make it out of my throat.

Von’s voice was steady, spoken with clarity of purpose and decisiveness. “Not only that. I’ll hurt you if you tell. I’ll find a way to hurt all your brothers and sisters.”

“Get on with it,” I finally gritted, distressed.

The eerie strings are scraping shrill, sharp notes across the music, a sound that makes the flesh itch, twitch, like it’s reliving a memory of being peeled off in strips.

His voice glided meltingly, like ice. “I don’t trust you, Mara. I’ve watched you over the years; you’ve been a happy little sycophant since you could talk. Tonight’s the first evidence I’ve ever seen from you that there could be more going on in your head than brainless, parroted praise. And it...”

He sighed angrily through his nose, eyebrow twitching downwards. “It makes you something more than background noise, now. I can’t ignore you anymore.”

My anxiety was building to a frenetic fearfulness. The grand piano grows teeth and bites down on the pianist’s fingers. The conductor moves as though he’s seizing, like he’s being electrocuted, he’s pale and exhausted and trapped in a dance of sickness and torture.

“I’m escaping to the outside tonight. I’ll let you come with me.”

All at once, it all disintegrates into dead air. Silence. As silent as the room really was.

“Outside,” I echo.

Still kneeling, it seemed almost as though he were speaking with concern to a young, vulnerable entity-- if not for his face impressing more that he was prepared to lunge forward and tackle me should it be deemed necessary. “We would come back,” Von nodded tersely at me, “by morning. I know where to go. I’ve done it before.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“You have to decide _now,_ ” He stressed.

There was dead air in my mind. “I-I...”

Von stood abruptly. Without another glance at me, robes fluttering with the swift movement, he turned towards the door.

With a cry, I grabbed onto his hand.

I saw him react just as badly as I did to the alien press of a palm, even through two layers of gloves, but I didn’t dare let go. I pleaded, hoarse from nerves, “Wait.”

The words fell from me like tears, threatening and threatening to spill, and then running out of control. “Would... would... would you really take me, Von? Are you really leaving? Outside? Outside where? Are there people? Is it near--?”

He looked extremely averse, like he was about to rip his hand out of mine, but then his expression gradually tempered. He faced me fully again and placed his other hand over the back of my hand. Each larger than mine; both tightening harshly. But Von’s voice, in a way I’ve never heard from him before, was soft, almost soothing. “It’s a few hours away by carriage. It’s a town. The people there are nothing like the people here. Mara,” His eyes went wide. “Our mothers and fathers, our siblings, they’re barely enough to fill the tiny world we spend our entire lives in. They’re empty. Outside, each and _every_ single person lives in a world of their own, a life of their own, so different and _huge,_ that you can’t even begin to imagine it.”

His grip tightened and tightened until it almost hurt. My other hand finally fluttered to his wrist. And I stared up, up into his icy eyes as my trembling fingers brushed his wrist. And I nodded. Family name Auvreana, given name Mara; my name burning on the dotted line, the letters warping grotesquely under the lick of flames.

Really, that’s all there should be to tell. This is the complete body of my confession. What happened after this was out of my hands; taken out of them, confiscated, because my monstrous hands had broken my life into pieces past the point it could ever be repaired again. Nothing beyond this point is important to the testament of my regret.

I know that. I do know that.

But, God, how lonely this end is. I am half-blind in the pitch blackness, half-delirious from my body’s state, half-numb in the hand I write with, but at least I can still do this. At least this is something to do. I need to pretend that I am really addressing this to someone. I need to pretend that someone, someday, will actually read these words.

I am reading back over my confession, and realizing that all that I have written so far is long-winded prattle. Even now, after everything, I’ve still deluded myself into a grand state of self-importance. I should wait out my days in quiet penitence, but I can’t. I can only sit here in a cage composed of my failures, composed in my own words.

I need something to do, so I will continue. I will deteriorate in motion. But you don’t have to watch. You can stop reading here, if you ever started.

Von’s solution for dealing with the ascetic room, it turns out, was simple to the point of anticlimax. It was just impossible to predict by one who takes for granted that the punished child has never had access to the outside world, and to items or spells easily found outside a tightly controlled environment.

“It nulls most spells of abjuration,” Von told me, turning the small stone over in his fingers cleverly before pressing it to the space where the door of the ascetic room appears, which it instantly did. His mouth quirked. “I bought it for a little over forty gold.”

“Where did you get the gold?” I asked, voice quickly falling into a hush as he opened the door, and we were about to head into the hallway.

Von pressed a finger to his lips, and then with a conspiratorial glint to his eye, tapped one of the many solid gold ornaments decorating his ear. Only then did I finally notice that two on the left were missing. If selling our holy regalia in the street wasn’t an unthinkable concept to me, it would have been entirely obvious.

Sneaking out of the manor wasn’t exceedingly difficult, and was substantially expedited compared to my solo expedition. Von moved with obvious practice; I needed only to keep up with him. When we were outside, the night yawned cold and wide above us. I shivered as I stood and watched, with nerves churning my stomach, the warm golden light of the tall windows coming from where our family was still celebrating. I was witnessing the divine congregation of every living Auvreana from a vantage point never before seen, I realized, not by anyone in the world-- except Von, who, while I slept awake, was busy choosing and preparing the carriage we would steal.

He had been drawn immediately to the ones traditionally ridden by adults. Since the children always boarded first, I’d never seen before how the carriages were operated; my mouth fell open in amazement as Von conjured in front of the carriage two glowing, spectral steeds. One of the lovely ghosts turned its huge head to look down at me, as though scrutinizing me. I couldn’t help but hold my breath. Once it reached whatever conclusion it reached, it relaxed and turned forward again. Somehow I did not get the sense that it detested me, though maybe it was just my imagination, or just that it didn’t know what I’d done.

Von ushered me into the carriage. It was surely colder outside than in, but my body did not cease shivering, even when he followed me inside and slammed shut the port door as solemn punctuation. I sat immediately, and he took a seat as far from me on the other side of the carriage as possible. As we began to move, I was able to see for the first time how the blue-green foliage clawed at our windows as we crept past, how the huge pale moon stared unblinkingly at us.

I pressed my hand against the glass, and became suddenly, irrationally dumbstruck by the sight of the manor in the distance. The light of the windows getting steadily farther and farther away shook me ferociously out of my stupor, and I wanted to shout _No!_ with the desperation and headrush of watching the edge of a cliff speed high and away from me.

Woe, after a moment I made myself sit back, and said nothing about it. Perhaps, in some alternate world, there is a Mara who narrowly avoided his fate of dying in captivity of surgical sepsis. The only sound was the gentle rumbling of the carriage-- the spectrals made no noise and were probably hardly a physical presence at all. So really, it was only Von and I, the lone two inside a tiny vessel voyaging into a great monstrous unknown.

No, that’s not quite accurate. It was unknown only to me. I watched the manor through the window as the distant light was intermittently blotted by trees, blinking with increasing frequency like a frantic SOS, until it was gone, completely blotted out by the black bars of the natural cage we were entering. I finally sat back in my seat, heart skipping nauseatingly. My eyes flicked up to Von, to his stony profile.

Where are we going? What are you thinking about? Will you keep me safe? With an obstinance that made me suspect he could feel the full weight of my unspoken thoughts and my eyes on him, Von kept staring out the window. He clearly didn’t plan to ease my mind of his own initiative. Indignancy flooded me, enough that it surprised me to feel so much even through my drowning sense of dread, and I decided it was rude of him to ignore me. I decided it was therefore within my right to ignore his reticence, and to ask at least one question. Perhaps it was only an excuse (not so surprising, in that case) to ask a question that threatened to burn a hole in my tongue if I didn’t speak it aloud.

“Von? ...Are we still good?”

I felt overly aware of my body as I waited for his answer. There seemed to be some kind of disconnect. My mind was calm, and seemed to have nothing at all to do with the trembling of my limbs-- the way a rider had nothing to do with the shivering of his horse. There was no taking the words back once they crossed the air between us, and I watched him turn to me, turn his pale-fire eyes on me, with numb anticipation.

I watched his mouth form the words. Who do you think would come help you.

“What?”

“What do you think good amounts to,” Von repeated.

I didn’t really understand what the question meant. But I felt like I was being tested, and his attention was fixed on me with the most precarious of attachments, and if I disappointed him he might withdraw to somewhere I couldn’t reach him. Feeling out of my depth, I gave an answer that felt safe and simplistic; irrefutable. “Good amounts to... virtue. Virtuous living amounts to prosperity. It is how to live a good life.”

“Are we being virtuous right now?” Von asked. I didn’t like being asked that. I was a little angry at him for asking as though it was obvious, because I knew it was, but even so I had secretly hoped he would tell me something to the contrary.

“No, we’re not.”

He made a sarcastic gesture, hand sweeping across the air. A wordless _ta-dah,_ propping up my words mockingly as the grand answer to my grand question. _No, we’re not._ That was when I could tell that he didn’t actually think it was the answer. I realized he wasn’t taking me seriously again; evidently, I had said something wrong.

I wanted to know, “What do _you_ think good amounts to?”

It didn’t seem like he would deign to answer, staring down at me like an ivory gargoyle from his ivory tower. But then, “Living a virtuous life,” He answered coolly. “But not necessarily a good life.”

“Good... amounts to living a virtuous life... but not a good life.”

“Correct.”

“But that’s nonsense,” I blurted, brows furrowed.

Von set his jaw in anger, turning his nose up even more than before. His words were steeped in condescension as he began to lecture me, and it quickly became clear he’d assumed he was dealing with a linguistical dunce in his youngest cousin, that I had failed to understand how the _good_ he was speaking of was different from the _good_ I had inquired about. I interrupted him outright, “--No, Von, I understand your semantics. It’s still nonsense. A virtuous life is a good life, it’s only logical.”

He blinked, apparently caught off guard for a second. The satisfaction was almost heady, addicted (I can now admit) as I was to feeling like the cleverest. He retorted, “Subjective morality doesn’t belong in the domain of _logic.”_

“There’s nothing subjective. We were created by God to be virtuous beings and we are judged by how well we adhere to our purpose. A good plan is one that functions well. A good knife is one that cuts well. It’s as simple as that.”

He bit his lip, falling silent for the moment. It didn’t occur to me in that moment, in all my infinite wisdom, that our actions hitherto had barred us from my own definition of good. Trying to conceal my hammering heart, I felt a rush of adrenaline from contradicting him, from meeting his argument on equal footing, and even putting him on the back foot. I had a brief moment to relish the thought that perhaps I wasn’t as out of my depth as I had previously felt. A moment of control, a false one.

It was no time at all until Von countered, with none of the detached semanticism we had been lobbying back and forth, brutally, “If you’re only doing what you have to for survival and freedom, who the hell has the right to tell you you’re living _poorly,_ anyway?”

He shifted forward, his voice striking a flinch from me with its wildfire ferocity. “If you’re born and your options are shitty from the start and the only way to _live a virtuous life_ is to cut yourself down and cut yourself down until you’re a fucking scrap of a person, then-- then there’s a fucking difference between a virtuous life and a good one _now_ , isn’t there?”

I was silent.

“Still nothing but nonsense to you? _Mara._ ” He barked, making me flinch again.

I was unused to raised voices. I was unused to Von’s open hostility. I stared at him, rattled into muteness as I absorbed and puzzled his words.

The sight of my wounded expression lead the fire in him to be smothered-- not by concern, it seemed, but by sated satisfaction. He sat back, rolling his shoulder.

“Sometimes I think you’re okay, Mara,” He added, whether out of barbed spite or out of genuine hurt, or both, I didn’t know. “But most of the time you sound exactly like _them_.”

I didn’t see why he insisted on there being so much difference between us, when both of us had been raised in the same family, and we were technically both still children. He was only older by eighty-seven years, and anyway, age is insignificant among children; we earned respect through merit. (Of which my whole life had lead me to believe I had more.) I wasn’t sure what he meant by me “sounding like them,” beyond his presumably referring to our family, when all I’d done was cite basic knowledge. But what became clear above all was that Von seemed to despise the entire concept of cardinal right and wrong. It shocked me-- yet, it fit with what I already knew of him.

Prior to that night, I’d never really had an extensive conversation with Von. I only saw him infrequently, just for a few days every few months. Even without any awareness of the forbidden knowledge I had gained that night, I had always been terrified of him. There was something about his personality that, after so many years, with a chill, I was just now finally starting to identify.

Whenever in the past I did see him, he was always alone. His brothers and sisters universally ostracized him. Von was the biggest troublemaker in the entire family, across all of the branches; he incited punishments constantly, even deliberately. He openly cared nothing for when others suffered through communal punishments brought on by his insolence. He detested authority and did so loudly. And I’d never understood why.

I only understood outcasts such as Andel-- those who aspired to prosperous piety, but were born hampered with a dullness of mind-- or the outsiders we are taught about with aim to someday convert, those who are yet unaware of the superiority that devotion will bring. But Von, razor-sharp, fox-sly Von, rejected every truth that would pacify his tumultuous soul despite having every opportunity to know better, and I couldn’t fathom why.

Why did he do the things he did? Why did I do the things I did? We had every opportunity to know better. Why hadn’t I known better?

I’m not sure what lead me to ask my next question. I can’t remember what I was thinking-- really, I can’t. I am doing my best to remember everything correctly but I just can’t recall what I was thinking. But I do remember saying this, I do.

“Have you done something bad, Von?”

I remember because of his reaction; he inhaled sharply, like he’d been startled. Maybe I said it because I wondered-- I still wonder-- why, if we were both black sheep of the family, that only he seemed to savor his miscreancy. He seemed proud of it. I still don’t know why. I don’t understand how he can be happy living devoid of love from God, or our family, or anybody. I’m not.

But back to the question-- why did I ask that-- what had I gleamed about him in that moment...?

“Why?” Von had demanded to know too.

Isn’t it funny? Almost as if I can foresee these events no better now than when I first lived them-- I only just recalled my answer. I think it was so difficult to remember because it was difficult to formulate. I could think of no ancient wisdom, no tenured scripture to answer with. It was cobbled-together words from premature thoughts that tottered from my tongue like newborn fawns. I said, “It just... seems like... you’ve done something, that you are not proud of. A long time ago. Maybe even before I was born. So you became angry-- _scared_ by the idea that what you did means that you can’t be a good person. So now you... you just... just gave up. On trying to be good.”

That was when the horses shrieked.

My blood turned to ice in my veins; I shot up out of my seat, head swiveling towards the direction of the ghastly sound, but there was no viewing window to the front of the carriage. Von did not react like me, and remained seated. But his face was several shades paler than normal. I thought he might still have been recovering from my words to him, trapping him in a rare moment of total flat-footedness. From the side windows I could tell that the carriage was rolling to a stop; something had definitely happened to the spectral steeds. We had been intercepted.

I knew when our eyes met that Von was sharing my exact thought to the letter: the family had chased us down.

There was a strange sound that I only realized much later, whole seconds later, actually came from Von’s throat-- a strained, guttural sound, almost like a desperate jackal, before he pounced from his seat and struck me across the head hard enough to send me to the floor.

Because it was the first time anyone had ever hit me, I couldn’t move past it quickly. It was not so painful-- a burst of pain that winds you, and then the swell of a dull pounding, but other than that it is really mostly disorientating. There are worse types of pain, much worse, like burning, and breaking, and burrowing in the skin. But Von was the first person to ever hit me.

I was on my back, gazing up. I could see the door from where I lay. If I could only get my wits back about me, I could get up and run for it. I knew it was important, I knew I needed to run or else I would be caught here, and everything I had done would crash down upon me, finally, like I had been waiting for it to. I think that’s why I couldn’t make myself move. The pain was shocking and new, but the sense of receiving punishment slotted right into one of the deepest and most familiar grooves in my mind. My mind became-- I can only describe it as still. My mentality switched seamlessly into a childlike stillness. I felt an utter void of agency. I was only aware of a higher authority, gone limp in the jaws of something that smelled primordially of safety and danger at the same time.

I know why I hesitated, but it is a mystery why Von did. He only appeared in my dazed vision after several seconds, face inscrutable, hand outstretched. And then it was several seconds more before he finally cast it.

“ _Hold person.”_

Now I was unable to get up even if I tried. Even if my life depended on it. My body was completely frozen, locked in place.

Von left me. I know what he was thinking when he did it. The family would find me, and it would buy him time to run away. He didn’t know who, or what, he was really handing me to.

I could ask: would he have left me there, if he knew? I could ask: would he feel sorry for me if he knew where I was, what had been done to me? But it doesn’t matter. It would probably bring no comfort to me to know, and if it did I wouldn’t deserve it.

How profoundly warped my perspective was, to discredit our family’s mercy and lenience. Evidently it was too merciful, too lenient. I don’t know what they would’ve done to me, for I’d never before heard of a crime as egregious as ours, but it would have been with my well being and purification in mind above all. To rip the rot out, nearly consumed by it as I was, and harvest what little remained worth saving, for the faintest glimmer of chance to spare me from my ultimate fate.

It was not any member of the Auvreana family that vanished our steeds and intercepted our carriage.

It was an agent of divine retribution. A specter of death descended on me and wrapped cold, corpse-like fingers around my throat, feeling my pulse bucking like a horse.

It pleased her to discover me alive.

I felt myself being lifted and my limbs arranged, perhaps by her alone, perhaps by other demoniac entities, I couldn’t tell. I was carried from the carriage in a hearse of heretic monsters, denied of even the privilege of crying, begging my mother or my father or my brother or my sister or Von or God or anyone to stop them from taking me away to someplace I knew I could never again crawl my way back out of.

* * *

It was his last words written by hand. He was collected for the next set of experiments, which afterward left the nerves of his arms irreparably damaged. His wrist moved only a little, and his fingers moved none. Long vertical stitches ran up the inner skin of his right elbow. No restorative effort at all was expended on his left arm; it was numb and swollen anyway, from the arterial injection of viper venom two sessions prior which had left it potholed with bone-deep ulcers that wept thick yellow exudate.

When Mara was again deposited in his cage, he prayed. He prayed incessantly. She’d grown to be more irritated by it every day. At first it had amused and flattered her to be mistaken for a demon, but in anger two days ago she’d punctured his eardrums. Hers were the last words he ever heard inside these stone walls. He read his own words out loud, now, deafly, in a whisper, imagining he was reading to someone else. The pace of the words, and the imagined reactions of a stranger, helped to anchor him to time. Condemnations and jeering were what he imagined most. It scared him to consider anything else.

It was painstakingly slow, and impossible to see while he was writing, but he found a way to scrape his battered tool against the bars again-- by gritting his crumbling faith between his teeth and bowing his neck.

* * *

Now, at last.

She’s frustrated with me.

Failed experiment.

Death seems soon.

Said everything necessary.

Thank you for reading.

 

Be good.

**Author's Note:**

> dont worry, 2 seconds after his death mara wakes up in a bed on another plane and gets to meet the raven queen and go on an adventure where he makes lots of friends. thanks for reading!


End file.
